Alas! the Rooks and Rookeries so pleasant to old Londoners are gradually diminishing and disappearing, and the London Rook, to our grandchildren, will be a bird of the past. The cause is not far to seek. The extension of buildings limits their feeding ground, and they have farther and farther to go to seek sustenance for themselves and their young. The Parks are now so cut up with walks and so frequented, that the birds can find but little repose and but scanty subsistence. When the writer first came to London the elms in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens were in the finest condition. Herds of Fallow Deer frequented the glades, and there was only one walk across Hyde Park from where the Marble Arch now stands to the Wellington Statue. All the rest was luxuriant grass, affording abundant food for birds and beasts. "Tempora mutantur!"[1]
Beginning westward, the first Rookery to notice is that in the grounds of Holland House, one of the most ancient in the land. The trees bordering the high road were formerly covered with nests; now there are only four, and thirteen more in the avenue. In the days when Addison wrote, and in later days, when Sheridan, Jeffery, Byron, Brougham, Lyndhurst, Tom Moore, Macaulay, and a host of other wits and celebrities passed under that grand avenue to the splendid hospitality of that glorious mansion, the Rookery was in its prime. Those great names are reminiscences of a great time in England's history, and are now of the past, and so soon will be the Rooks and the Rookery.
A colony of Rooks has existed for many years in the high trees in the north part of Kensington Gardens. This Rookery, in 1836, extended from the Broad Walk near the Palace to the Serpentine, where it commences in the Gardens, and there must have been very nearly one hundred nests. The Rooks were very busy and their voices very merry when our present gracious Queen first saw the light in the south-east apartments of Kensington Palace, on May 24th, 1819; and their descendants were as merry and as busy when her Majesty held her first Council on her Accession, in
- ↑ It is perhaps not generally known that in 1533 Rooks and Crows were so numerous, and were thought to be so detrimental to the farmers, that an Act was passed for their destruction. Every hamlet was to provide "Crow-nets" for two years, and the inhabitants were obliged at certain times to assemble and concert measures for the destruction of these birds.—Ed.
